Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Brian Keene says..........

From the official website of Brian Keene, upcoming writer of Doom Patrol #16:

"And next month, Doom Patrol #16 hits the stands. It was plotted by myself and Keith Giffen, written by me, drawn by Keith, and inked by Al Milgrom. It is a stand-alone issue, meaning you can read it without ever having read an issue of Doom Patrol. However, for those of you who do read Doom Patrol, this issue also ties-in closely with the on-going story arc (and introduces a few things that will impact the series in forthcoming issues). It also has cannibalism, face-ripping, angst, and Ambush Bug. How can you go wrong?"

It's true, doppelgangers have been a staple of drama since Shakespeare and the golden age of opera.Back when Jay Leno and David Letterman were friends (they were, too!) Dave had the NBC slot that Jimmy Fallon has now and Jay was doing stand-up. Whenever a guest cancelled, Dave called Jay because they both knew Jay would never have to rehash old material. He'd just hit a convenience store before he got to the studio and bought a TV Guide. This was before there were 300 cable channels and the guide would run brief descriptions of individual episodes, even reruns. Jay would sit backstage with a pen marking the guide while the guests and acts who showed went on. Whatever time was leftover due to the no-show, Jay would go on and read off every episode description he could find about 'an evil twin'. There were always at least three or four in prime time alone and even more in syndication. It got to be a sort of routine with them. The best thing about it is that they could always rely on the script practically being written for them-- TV would always run 'evil twin' stories and the public (I learned from watching this) always seemed surprised to hear that they did. Apparently it doesn't get old.

I remember the original Excalibur comic always had cool doppelganger stories. I especially remember the Weird War 3 graphic novel (these were the days when graphic novels were actually new stories and not just collected issues) had Excalibur vs. their Nazi doppelgangers. I guess the Nazi thing isn't that new, but as a kid reading that it was new to me. As you said, it goes back... Star Trek's mirror universe... evil twins on soap operas...